


come and attack me, it's not gonna hurt

by somethingdifferent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roller Derby, F/M, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Roller Derby, also i do know austin and it is the one part of the fic i can write w/ some accuracy, background stormpilot and background roux!, everyone is southern!!! because of REASONS!!!! except for ben who is a damn yankee, i'm a mess this is a mess, i’ve never written anything a/b/o before can u tell, takes place in austin tx bc whip it is there!, the extent of my understanding of roller derby comes almost exclusively from whip it, title from let's make love and listen to death from above by css!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23898019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: “Nothing,” maybe-Ben says quickly, mirroring her arm-crossing move, showing off exactly how muscular his arms are under his t-shirt. Poor cotton probably never had to work so hard to contain so much...torso. “I just—I’ve never seen you before, is all. I’d remember, if I’d s—” He cuts himself off before he can finish the word. There’s a twitch under his eye, like a muscle spasm. “Seen you before.”“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. “I’ve never been. It’s my first time at roller derby actually.”The corner of his mouth tips, edging into a smirk. “A virgin.”She sputters, “You’re—that’s—inappropriate.”[rey/ben; the roller derby au! the whip it au! the a/b/o au! the nobody asked for this au!]
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 52
Kudos: 240





	1. filled with fury and starry-eyed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me five months ago: literally who tf reads a/b/o fics lol  
> me now: you can pry reylo a/b/o fics from my cold dead hands
> 
> as you can tell ive never written anything a/b/o before!! also the extent of my roller derby knowledge is based on the movie whip it. however i am familiar with the city of austin. please be gentle and excuse any mistakes: this is all very new for me but i could not resist!
> 
> this chapter is LONG! the others will likely not be this long, just as a heads-up. but i hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> chapter titles will be from songs that i will link at the end notes!

** 1\. filled with fury and starry-eyed **

Texas in the summer is its own particular kind of hell. After three summers in Austin, three god damn heats spent in the summer spent in Austin—fuck, after ten minutes in the city any time between April and October—Rey should definitely already know this.

It manages to come as a shock anyway, every single time.

It happens in early June—during the last twenty of her morning shift at Amy’s, when she’s already dreading the walk home in the blistering sun. Her hands are half-frozen from juggling both the ice cream and the cool metal of the paddles, and there’s sweat dripping from the stray hairs that she couldn’t quite wrangle at her temples, and she’s almost ninety percent positive she’s developing some truly hideous stains under her armpits. When the door opens again, for what must be the hundredth time in the past fifteen minutes, Rey feels just about ready to lay down behind the counter and play dead like a damn possum rather than deal with any more customers.

And then—

Two girls skate in through the door.

Literally. Skate in. On _wheels_.

There’s practically no one else there; most of the guests are out front, eating in the shade of the building, and the few that are inside to take advantage of the heartbreakingly weak air conditioning aren’t paying much attention to the counter.

Rey straightens her back as the girls approach, and the smile she gives them is a mite more genuine than the one she’s been offering up for the last few hours.

She opens her mouth, about to recite her standard line— _W_ _elcome to Amy’s Ice Creams! What can I get y’all today?_ —when the girls bypass the glassed-in tubs of toppings and the ice cream smashing counter to lean over the register.

The older-looking of the two grins brightly at what Rey is sure is the look of total confusion on her face.

“Hi there,” she stage whispers. “Do you think anybody’d notice if we slipped this up on the bulletin board? Or do we need managerial approval?”

Rey steps closer, unable to resist the urge to glance at the poster the other woman wants to hang. It’s a flyer, she realizes, for an exhibition. A roller derby exhibition, based on the hot pink silhouette of a girl in skates and the words _ROLLER DERBY LEAGUE OF TEXAS_ written in huge letters across the top.

Rey knows, vaguely, what roller derby is, but nothing about how it works. Mostly just that it involves speed and skates and contact. Lots and lots of contact.

Something in the center of her chest thumps and picks up speed. Her blood sings.

Rey is sort of aware that she’s being weird, glancing back and forth between the flyer and the girls over and over until it borders on rude that she hasn’t yet replied, but eventually she gets out, “I think I’d have to ask my manager. And he’s not coming in until later, so.” Not that Finn would say no, she should add, but finds herself unable to do anything besides nod frantically by way of explanation.

“Boo,” the other girl, the younger one, teases, and Rey’s eyes shift and linger and widen to the point of pain. She can scent it on the back of her throat, and her nose tickles, itches, because while she didn’t pick up a whiff of anything from the older girl, a beta through and through, the younger one is definitely—

“You’re an—”

“An omega?” the girl finishes, grinning. “Yes, I am.”

Rey flushes. She should know better than to point out something so personal as a perfect stranger's designation, especially at work. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, lowering her eyes. “That wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—I was just surprised, is all.”

“No worries.”

Rey wants to crawl in a hole and die out of sheer embarrassment. “It was...very rude.”

“Maybe,” the girl says, still smiling kindly, “if you were a beta or an alpha. But I get it, babe. Us omegas, we gotta stick together.” She sticks her hand out, letting it dangle until Rey finally gets the hint and takes it. “Rose,” she tells her, and jerks her thumb to gesture to the older woman. “My sister, Paige.”

Rey shakes the other girl’s—Paige’s—hand, too, and bites her lip as she leans back. “Rey,” she says, letting a small smile slip onto her face. “So do you—” she gestures to nothing at all, “I mean—what kind of league is it?”

The emphasis Rey puts on _kind_ doesn’t go unheard, it seems.

“It’s a women’s league,” Paige provides slowly. “Mixed designation.”

“Oh.” Rey shifts on her feet, trying to imagine tiny omega Rose going toe-to-toe with an alpha double her size and strength. All Rey can see is Rose falling flat on the floor, bloodied and bruised. “And that—that works?”

Rose shrugs, sliding back and forth on her skates, making a hard swishing noise back and forth on the linoleum. “Yeah, mostly. It’s a good league for that, honestly. I’ve been doing it for a few years now, and I haven’t seen any egregious alpha-on-omega violence.”

“Except for Kaydel’s broken arm,” Paige points out.

“Well, yeah, but Phasma didn’t mean to hit her that hard on _purpose_ , there were extenuating circumstances in the form of Jannah shoving her into the rail—”

Rey feels dizzy. Exhilarated. And for absolutely no reason—she’s never given roller derby a second thought a day in her life. “Broken arm?”

Rose and Paige both turn to look at her again. There’s something in Rose’s eyes, something in the way she’s looking at Rey. Like she _sees_ her. Like she knows exactly what Rey is thinking of: her hair blown back and her legs burning and her skin aching for—for _everything_.

For _contact_.

“You should come,” Rose says, shoving the flyer into Rey’s hands until her fingers curl around the edges, crumpling the paper. “See what’s what.”

Rey feels her neck move, is somewhat aware that she’s nodding. She blinks once, then twice, before she realizes that the sisters have skated halfway out the door.

“It was nice to meet you,” she calls before they can vanish completely. “Rose, Paige.”

Rose laughs, loud and delighted, and glances at her sister. “Oh please,” she says brightly, “it’s Scary-Kate and Bashley.”

Together, in perfect sync, they raise their hands to wave, grin, and skate back onto the sidewalk.

Rey feels kind of like she was just hit by a car.

  
For two days, she convinces herself she won’t be going to the exhibition. For two days, she steadfastly ignores the flyer sitting on her bedroom dresser (because she took it home and didn’t leave it at work to advertise the event, didn’t even mention it to Finn), and she goes about her business as usual: work, walk, shower, sleep, wake, suppressant, walk, work. With classes out for the summer, and living in Maz’s attic in her ramshackle house for cheap, her life follows a pattern, and the pattern is boredom.

On the third day, she picks up the flyer again for the first time since Rose thrust it into her chest and realizes that the exhibition is scheduled to start in two hours.

Rey lets out a sad, pathetic little yelp of panic and runs to her closet to find something cool to wear—and then immediately wonders, what is cool to wear to roller derby? She is irrationally angry at her past self for never doing the proper research; her past self should have anticipated this very situation arising!

After thirty minutes of unsuccessful outfit ideas and two failed attempts to do eyeliner wings, she finally calls Finn.

“I’m not doing the whole gay best friend who helps make you over thing, so you can just give up that pipe dream right now.” His voice is tinny over the phone, crackled with static. “But if you need backup while you attend this...event, then I will be there. Solely to ensure you aren’t murdered by any bloodthirsty riot girls.”

Rey flops down on her bed, the cheap metal frame groaning its protest under her weight. “Fantastic. And I accept that you won’t be doing the stereotypical gay best friend thing. Really, it’s a highly progressive stance to take.”

He sighs, and the phone crackles again. “But?”

“ _But_ ,” she says, drawing the word out for far longer than is strictly necessary, “can you help me with my outfit for just a teensy second?”

There is a pause. A longer than usual pause really, and Rey worries, suddenly, that Finn is actually upset with her for teasing. That she’s ruined her one friendship, driven him away the same way she drives everyone away. Any girls who try to be friendly in college and any and all beta boyfriends and—and her parents.

It feels like an eternity before he finally says, “Fine,” with what sounds like a grin coloring his tone.

Rey relaxes by inches, nodding absently as he goes on, “But please note that I do so under strong protest.”

“Your protest is noted and recorded thusly,” she says happily, and hangs up.

“I think you might be losing it.”

“Shh.”

“No, I’m serious, Rey. Losing it. Totally and completely.” Finn glances around, taking in the dirty, sticky floors, the strange assortment of fans that have accumulated around the ring of the track to shout their appreciation and adoration and borderline obsessive love for the players. Rey truly appreciates the fact that he helped her pick a decent outfit—jeans shorts and a spaghetti strap tank and a flannel shirt tied around her waist—and she appreciates the fact that he drove her to the arena. However, she's definitely going to kill him if he keep distracting her. “Like, seriously. Roller derby? Whatever it is? Seems like a weird thing to get into out of the blue.”

“Finn,” she hisses, turning to glare at him more forcefully as the lights in the arena dim and the noise around them swells impossibly higher. “It’s about to start!”

She barely hears the announcer standing in the middle of the track. She barely hears Finn’s continuous commentary as the first of the team rolls into the rink, each of them clad in Brownie Scout-esque beige and brown. Rey spots Rose and Paige right away. Together, they twirl, doing laps through the circuit to rile up the crowd further. They look different, both of them, and it isn’t just the fishnet tights or abbreviated hemlines or the way they’ve both plastered on makeup that seems more like warpaint; they seem more _solid_ up there. More alive.

Rey’s heart pounds, watching them, watching all six of the women on the team working the crowd. It makes her mouth go dry, makes her blood rush in her ears. All of that _aliveness_.

The announcer, a tall, redheaded alpha, practically screams their team’s name into the microphone: The Rebels.

She could be that, she thinks dizzily. A rebel.

“But these Rebel Scum,” the announcer—Hux, she thinks he introduced himself as, or Hugs, or something similar—goes on, still shouting, “will have their work cut out for them when they go up against reigning league champions, The First Order!”

The fever pitch around them builds from screams of excitement to roars of approval. Rey can see why; the women gliding onto the track, clad in uniform black and white booty shorts and mini skirts and tiny little tops, look nothing short of power incarnate. The tallest one, even taller in her skates, a stocky alpha with platinum blonde hair and a cold, haughty look on her perfectly symmetrical face, seems to inspire the most applause; Rey hears more than one shriek of delight over _Mother Superior_ as she races around the track.

Rey is so distracted by the two teams, by their aggressively sensual outfits, their speed and agility as they leap and glide through the rink before getting into position, that she almost doesn’t even notice the two men that have walked into the middle of the rink. They’re standing together by the bench where a few of the players sit, presumably waiting to be called into play, and chatting with each other. Rey couldn’t possibly hear either of them through the din and noise from the bleachers, let alone _scent_ them, but it doesn’t stop her from recognizing that both of them are alphas.

In her experience, it’s all in the stance. The way they unapologetically take up space, the way they...loom. The shorter of the two looks like a god damn movie star: classically handsome and square-jawed. He lifts his chin as he surveys the women, occasionally pausing his conversation to call out encouragement or corrections to the girls currently bashing their way through the first minutes of play. Finn zeroes in on him almost instantly, which, yeah, that’s nothing if not predictable. The other man, however is...different.

Rey almost snorts aloud. Different is certainly a word she could use.

He’s...large. Tall. Taller than the other man—than everyone else in the rink, really, with the exception of Mother Superior. There’s something about him, she thinks. Something unusual. Striking: the way his eyes narrow under thick, dark eyebrows, the way the light casts over the sharp planes of his cheekbones, a prominent nose and full lips. He is dressed entirely in black, from the t-shirt that stretches tight across— _Jesus Christ_ —the broadest, most muscular chest she’s ever seen on any man in real life, right down to the plain black sneakers on his huge feet. And his arms—and, fuck, his _hands_.

Everything about him is _big_. Big and broad and strong.

Some voice in the back of her mind that sounds just a little too much like her omega brain whispers, _Alpha is so strong, isn’t he, he could pin us down so_ nicely _—_

Rey shakes her head, clearing it of her sudden burst of hormone-fueled insanity. She shifts her attention away from the coaches (as she’s figured that this must be what they are, the coaches for The Rebels and The First Order), and back to the gameplay.

As she watches, a First Order player with a star on her helmet and the words _PUSSY IN BOOTS_ on the back of her crop top weaves through the crush of skaters and whips to the front of the pack, screaming her victory as the scoreboard lights up for her team.

“I take it back.” Rey glances at Finn, hardly able to bear tearing her eyes away from the show. Finn, for his part, is still fixated on the Rebels’ coach, his attention flitting rapidly between the more-conventionally-attractive-but-significantly-less-intriguing alpha and the literal bloodsport playing out in front of them. “This,” he declares over the roar of the crowd, “is fucking awesome.”

  
To Rey’s surprise, Rose actually remembers her. Not only that: she screeches with delight, leaps over the merch table, and launches herself into Rey’s arms the second they make eye contact.

“Rey!” she shrieks happily. “From Amy’s! You’re here! You showed! I knew you would!”

Rey laughs, startled that she inspired so much joy in such a short span of time, but she wraps her arm’s around the other woman anyway.

“I did show,” she laughs. “Y’all were...amazing.”

“Spectacular,” Finn pipes up.

“Life-changing.”

“Life-changing?” Rose grins. “Is that so? You know this means we’re expecting to see you at try-outs, right?”

If it’s even possible, Rey’s heart picks up speed, barreling out of control like a high-speed freight train. “Try-outs?”

“Hell yeah,” Rose says. “To be on the team!”

“I don’t—” Rey laughs, half incredulous and half far too excited. “I don’t think I’ve roller-skated since I was ten.”

Rose makes a skeptical noise in the back of her throat, waving her hands as if to say, _nonsense!_ “Neither had I before Paige got me into all this,” she says, soothing. “Just try it out. Maybe you’ll like it.” Her eyes flicker away, glancing over Rey’s shoulder, and her expression lights up as she waves at someone approaching behind her. “Oh, hey, let me introduce you to our coach. Poe, Rey, Rey, Poe!”

The shorter alpha from earlier—the very regularly handsome one—nods a greeting in Rey’s general direction.

”Good to know you, Rey,” he says, smiling easily. Clearly used to charming his way through life. Rey wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up driving her up the wall.

There’s the vaguest smell of freshly mowed grass that follows him, but nothing more than that. An alpha, just as she thought, but not a particularly appealing one.

Not that she’s appealing to him, either, based on the bedroom eyes he keeps throwing Finn’s way.

Rose, obviously unaware of the silent flirtation occurring in front of them, chirps happily, “Rey’s going to be trying out for a spot on The Rebels.”

That, at least, catches Poe’s attention.

He looks back to Rey, his smile widening. “Are you now?”

“Maybe,” she says, somewhat coy. “Thinking about it.”

Poe tilts his head in acknowledgement. “You should do it. We could use another tall girl.”

“If that’s supposed to be a subtle dig about my height,” Rose says, crossing her arms and drumming her fingers over her skin, “then I have to tell you, it ain’t subtle.”

He laughs, throwing an arm around the shorter girl’s shoulders.“Oh, honey, I kid. Just don’t let The First Order steal this one away.” Poe glances from Rose back to Rey and winks, smirking. “I can’t let Ben abscond with such a promising new recruit.”

Rose salutes, mock serious. “I would never, Commander.”

“That’s Captain to you,” says another voice, firm but lilting. Another woman, an alpha, taller than Rey with bubblegum pink hair and the same subtle smell of it wafting off of her skin, crosses around them to the merchandise table, using a key on her spiral wristband to open the money box. She grins, announcing proudly, “I had him demoted.”

“You can’t demote me,” Poe protests, somewhat impotently. “I’m in charge.”

The woman scoffs. Rey likes her immediately. “Not even slightly.” Her hands move quickly, counting the money in the box before stuffing it back inside and locking it again. “Dameron, I need to talk to you about—”

“Amilyn, if you’re going to yell at me about my playbook again—”

“I am.”

Poe groans. “Fine. But first, I’m getting—what’s your name?”

Finn smiles, lifting his chin, and Rey nudges him in the side, grinning. “Finn.”

A flash of that same disarming smile crosses Poe’s face, perhaps slightly more genuine than before. “Finn,” he says softly. “Let me get Finn, here, a Lone Star.”

Amilyn seems to consider this. “Acceptable,” she says at long last. She turns to nod at Rose. “Bashley.”

Rose nods in return. “Screw,” she says, and the other woman’s mouth quirks before she walks away, following Poe and Finn as they make their way over to the bar.

Rey quirks an eyebrow. “Screw?”

“Barrymore,” Rose explains, laughing. “If you come to try-outs, you can meet the rest of the gang and get some badass name inspiration. Better start thinking of what you might like to call yourself, you know.”

“If I even make the team.”

Rose cocks her head and narrows her eyes, seeming to consider her.

“I don’t know, Rey,” she says, a slow smile stretching across her face. “I’ve got a good feeling about you. Gimme your phone.”

“What? Why?” Rey hands her the cell anyway, watching as Rose clicks over to her messages and starts typing in a number.

“So I can text you the info for try-outs, duh.”

Rey can’t help but grin, thinking about it, already planning where she might get some used roller skates so she can start practicing.

Rose hands her back her phone triumphantly, her expression smug over how quickly Rey acquiesced to her demands. Before Rey can say anything in reply, though, Rose’s eyes dart away, again over Rey’s shoulder, and she suddenly straightens up, smoothing the curls at the sides of her cheeks. 

“Listen,” she says quickly, “stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Rey barely has time to say, “Okay, bye,” before Rose is moving through the crowd, straight in the direction of the red-haired announcer from before.

Rey rolls her eyes. Of fucking course she’d be ditched by not one, but _two_ different people in favor of pursuing men. Alphas, no less. Just like the rest of the world: revolving around the axis of the god damn knot.

It makes her wish, not for the first time, that she was a beta like Finn.

Because being an omega fucking _sucks_ sometimes. The embarrassment of when she first presented, how she’d dripped slick onto her chair in the middle of her high school English class and was sent off with her uncaring beta guardian, who didn’t know and didn’t care to figure out how to help her through it. The way it seems like every boss she’s ever had, every important teacher, every coach on a sports team, every asshole on the bus has been an alpha, hell-bent on putting her in her place. There’s her heats, which are just bad in general; the fact that one of the two is always in the dead of summer, in August, is just icing on the shit sundae. Every year she’s had her heat in Austin, Rey gets so fucking hot in every sense of the word that she wants to crawl out of her skin between every single self-inflicted orgasm.

A fucking nightmare, sometimes, being an omega. At least Maz gets it; it’s half the reason she gave her such a good deal for the little attic apartment.

Rey stands there, in front of a cheap folding table topped with roller derby t-shirts and playing cards showing off the different players, each of them with kick-ass names like _WICKED BITCH OF THE WEST_ or _DARTH BRAWL_ or—Rey’s personal favorite— _SLICK JAGGER_. So consumed is she in reading the names and trying to attach them to some of the faces she saw during the game, that she doesn’t hear someone approaching the table until they’re practically right on top of her.

The scent is the first thing she registers. It hits her like a god damn hammer to the face, stronger than any alpha she’s ever scented before.

And it’s—good, the scent. _Really_ good. Really _extremely_ good. Like cinnamon and dark chocolate and the way butter smells when she melts it on the stove and it starts to bubble and boil and for a moment she becomes entirely convinced that boiling, melted butter alone would be good enough to subsist on for eternity.

All of that, but in a smell.

Rey is almost dizzy, physically dizzy, when the person makes his way over to the other side of the table—because it’s a he, she can see now, a very... _big_ he. She might actually have to crane her head back to look at him if he was standing up to his full height.

As it is, he’s distracted, his head bent forward as he mutters angrily to himself something that sounds like, “Of course no one’s manning the fucking merch table, that’s only how we make all our god damn money.” And then, he looks up at her, his brow still furrowed in abject annoyance. Rey thinks her heart actually stops beating.

The coach for The First Order is—yeah. Definitely an alpha. He practically radiates it, that _don’t fuck with me_ energy, that _I have a bigger dick than you and I don’t even need to brag about it_ vibe. And his face: not bad. Strangely alluring, all sharp, strong features, full mouth and strong jaw. Dark hair she wants to bury her hands in and pull on.

She feels how her jaw goes slack, how her eyes go slightly out of focus, because he can’t be on blockers, can he, not with the way he smells, and it’s—she can hardly even remember why she’s in this room, but it’s not cool to just go walking around as an unmated alpha with no blockers, is he trying to start a _riot_?

She registers, for a half second before he schools the expression off his face, the slight widening of his dark eyes, those sinful lips parting.

Then, it’s gone, vanished as if it’d never been there at all. He stares at her, a muscle in his jaw tensing. 

“You buying anything or what?” he asks, bordering on aggressive, after an overlong moment of silence.

She blinks, trying to shake herself clear of a flood of alpha-pheromone induced insanity. “What?” She jerks her head, halfway to shaking it no. “No, I was just—”

“Because if you’re not buying anything,” he goes on, completely ignoring her gaze in favor of staring at her hairline, “you should get out of the way, or people will think there’s a wait.”

Which, okay—an alpha being an asshole fuck: not surprising. Still a disappointment.

Rey squares her shoulders, tilting her head back until he’s forced, at the risk of shutting his eyes completely, to meet her stare.

“Hey, man,” she says, perhaps slightly too heated considering the circumstances, “I didn’t _do_ anything to you. Maybe I was planning on buying something.”

For a moment, he pauses, seeming to consider this. “Were you?”

“I was—thinking about it.”

He snorts. “That’s a no.”

Rey crosses her arms, annoyed with him for smelling so damn good while being such a huge dick—and yeah, she’s not gonna think about the existence of his dick or whether or not it is, in fact, a huge dick, or whether it might be proportional to the absolutely bonkers size of his hands or, Jesus Christ, his absolutely massive shoulders—

Yeah, it’s probably proportional. Damn him.

She’s not even going to let her brain go there; she is _stronger_ than that. Enlightened, even. There exist, she thinks she read in a textbook in college, monks in the hills of Tibet, or some shit, who are all omegas and don’t even, like, have heats anymore because of how _zen_ they are. Or maybe they do still have heats but they're just super amazing at managing themselves during them and not falling all over themselves to find and fuck an alpha. She is totally channeling that right now. Super zen. Look at how she’s decidedly not launching herself over the table and begging him to take her. Look at all her god damn self-control.

“Listen,” she sighs eventually, rubbing at her temples, “Rose told me to wait here, and my friend ran off with Poe, and I don’t know anyone else so just—can you chill?”

The guy—Ben, she thinks, if he’s The First Order coach Poe mentioned—shifts on his feet, seeming slightly thrown off balance.

 _Good_ , she thinks, perhaps a bit too savagely.

“You know Poe?” he says, sounding mildly perplexed.

“We just met.” He stares at her in this way that is both uncomfortable and arousing, and Rey narrows her eyes, folding her arms back across her chest. “What?”

“Nothing,” maybe-Ben says quickly, mirroring her arm-crossing move, showing off exactly how muscular his arms are under his t-shirt. Poor cotton probably never had to work so hard to contain so much...torso. “I just—I’ve never seen you before, is all. I’d remember, if I’d s—” He cuts himself off before he can finish the word. There’s a twitch under his eye, like a muscle spasm. “Seen you before.”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. “I’ve never been. It’s my first time at roller derby actually.”

The corner of his mouth tips, edging into a smirk. “A virgin.”

She sputters, “You’re—that’s— _inappropriate._ ”

“And accurate,” he says, and she can feel the rush of blood to her cheeks. Worse, the way her thighs clench together at how deep and dark his voice is. How he’d seemed so pleased to call her a roller derby virgin. “In this sense, at least.” He raises an eyebrow and presses his fingers down onto the table. Rey is glad she isn’t all that close to him, because with the way his scent hits her then, she thinks if she were any closer she’d probably lose just...all of her shit. “So?”

She waits to see if he’ll elaborate. “So...what?”

Something is in his eyes, something bright and quietly excited that she can’t quite place. “What’d you think?”

“It was...amazing,” she admits, almost reluctant to say it to him.

“Are you gonna do it, huh? Skating?”

A nod. “Thinking about it.”

“Come to The First Order try-outs.”

Rey almost clocks him for it, the way his voice wavers just on the edge of a command. Another asshole alpha: hot but shitty, always ready to slide back into using their stupidly effective power to make omegas like her do whatever they want when they don’t get their exact way. Instead, she breathes deep—regretting it slightly when it only serves to pull more of his scent into her lungs—and shakes her head.

He frowns, seeming displeased. “Why not? We’re the best team.” He says it so casually and confidently, Rey actually laughs. His frown only deepens. “We’ve been league champions for the past five years,” he tells her, as if her not believing him were the problem.

“Well,” she says, still laughing, “unlike almost every reality show contestant, I didn’t come here to win, I came here to make friends.”

His eyebrows lift. Something crosses his face then, that same look from before. It could be curiosity, she thinks. Or hunger. “But wouldn’t winning be so much more satisfying,” he says, the register of his voice low enough to make her literally squirm. 

“Sorry.” Damn it, her voice is stupidly breathless. Rey clears her throat and focuses, ignoring the part of her, the all-id-all-the-time omega part of her, that thrills at his masculine display of alpha dominance. Rey, the person, not the omega, is not that impressed. “Rose promised Poe she wouldn’t let some guy named Ben poach me.”

His mouth twists, almost rueful. “Ah, too bad.”

“Yeah, you’re too late,” she quips. 

“And a dollar short, yeah, that’s what they tell me.” One hand runs through his hair, a gesture that is so natural and self-conscious it endears him to her. Only for a fraction of a second. Less than that, even. “I guess you already know my name, then. And you are...?”

“Rey,” she supplies, before she can think better on it.

He nods, his eyes still bright with that same strange look. “Rey. Good to meet you.”

His lean into her space is so fluid and sudden that Rey almost jumps. One moment, there is a table separating them; the next, he’s almost whispering in her ear.

“Word of advice,” he rumbles, soft and deep as he meets her eye. “You need to be on suppressants if you’re serious about trying out.” Rey can only gawk at him, too overwhelmed by how utterly fucking rude he’s being to stop him as he goes on, “To be frank, I’m shocked any omega is comfortable just walking around without them, but especially considering the level of aggression in roller derby, it’s not safe to—”

She finally finds her voice again, sputtering out, “ _Excuse_ me?”

He blinks, seeming almost confused at her reaction, and leans away again. “What?”

She glares at him, all the attraction disappearing in a puff of smoke along with her hopes that one singular alpha male could prove himself to be a non-asshole. “I _am_ on suppressants. Maybe you should get on blockers.”

Something in his face changes, his mouth falling open and eyes widening. “I—” he starts, the word half strangled into nothing, when Finn, thank fuck, chooses that exact moment to sidle up to the table again.

“Rey!” Finn bursts out when he’s next to her, and Rey practically leaps out of her skin. He tosses an arm over her arm and shakes her playfully, grinning. “Sorry about that, I got a bit caught up.”

“Yeah,” she says, hardly able to tear her attention away from Ben, even as enraged as she is. “I can see that.” She takes a shuddering breath, finally glancing at Finn. “You ready to head out?”

“Yeah! Let’s hit it.”

She straightens her spine and plasters on a smile, steeling herself to be polite again to a profoundly impolite man. When she looks, Ben is already staring at her, the expression of sudden confusion replaced by a seething anger that seems as deep as a void and just as boundless.

The subject of his full-force glare seems to be Finn, who hardly seems to notice it with the way he’s riding the high of getting Poe’s number—which she assumes he did, based on the way he keeps checking his phone.

Rey sticks out her hand, and Ben just—looks at it until she awkwardly lets it fall back to her side. She raises it, instead, in a wave of humiliation and fury.

“It was nice meeting you, Ben,” she lies through her teeth.

“Likewise,” Ben grits out.

They turn to leave, and Finn has already walked ahead a few paces when Rey hears a throat clearing and Ben calling out again, “And Rey—”

She glances back, irritation and dread and uncomfortable horniness all spiking high with those two syllables.

“Yeah?”

There’s a tic in the corner of his jaw. His eyes, amber brown in the dim light, now seem huge and black and so heated it makes her shiver. He holds her gaze steadily, as if willing her to pay attention, but he doesn’t use any kind of alpha command like he almost did earlier. He just looks at her seriously and says, in that unbearable voice that practically drips sex that she hates and definitely isn't into, “Get better ones.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I will be all the rage tonight!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeAY6zdq0h4)


	2. need some blood in the cut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol does anyone remember when i said don't expect the chapters to be long? anyway this is about 6.5k words
> 
> if you are here to learn anything about roller derby you came to the wrong place!! this is my terrible trash lady au and i'm absolutely positive that none of it works like this. lower your expectations accordingly *finger guns away*
> 
> obligatory self-promo: follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/janedazey) :)

** 2\. need some blood in the cut**

There is, in the corner of Rey’s bedroom, right near the door with three locks (doorknob lock, deadbolt, and chain lock, each one installed and used—often—by Rey) that leads to the stairs that take her to the main part of Maz’s house, an aluminum baseball bat she has had since the ripe old age of seven. In Jakku, she’d kept it hidden under her bed in every house she was sent to, ready to pull out if and when she needed it. To protect herself; to keep people away: addicts breaking into the house she was placed in her freshman and sophomore years of high school, high and itching for a fix; the beta father when she was seventeen who thought her living under their roof entitled him to a taste of the goods, the law that kept her away from alpha-led households post-designation rendered ineffective by his lecherous intent; alphas, just in general. Any alphas, all alphas. Just—alphas.

Rey hasn’t needed the bat since moving out of Arkansas and starting college. She keeps it the way she keeps other old things she doesn’t really need anymore: as a cautionary measure. Glass to break in case of emergency. She doesn’t even really think about the bat unless someone points it out, those rare people she lets into her bedroom.

Rose, now, is one of those people. She eyes the bat like she’d eye a dead rattlesnake: from the corner of her eye, still somewhat afraid it might leap up from immobility and strike. She doesn’t make a comment on it though; she just flounces over to Rey’s bed and proclaims loudly, “If you’re that worried about it, just go to the doctor.”

Rey folds her arms across her chest. She can’t use the excuse with Rose that she’d used with Finn— _it’s easy for_ you _to say_ —because, unlike Finn, Rose actually knows what it can feel like, having to go to the doctor about omega shit. It isn’t easy for Rose to say, and so Rey is even more annoyed by the fact that Rose is saying it.

“It’s not that simple,” she says, already brutally aware she is going to lose this argument. “Last time I went to the clinic to refill my prescription, they told me my insurance wouldn’t cover the name-brand suppressants anymore. It’s thirty dollars out of pocket every month to get back on them.”

“Then see if you can up your dosage on the generics.” When Rey just continues to pout, shuffling her feet back and forth on the shag carpeting, Rose sits up, her eyebrows knitting together. “Rey, I’m only telling you to consider it. You shouldn’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. Besides, Poe and Amilyn didn’t say anything; Ben was probably just scenting someone else and jumped to the wrong conclusion.” A small, short laughs huffs out of Rose's mouth, and she shrugs. “He’s kind of blunt like that.”

Rey snorts, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, I believe that.”

“But,” Rose says, raising a hand, “if you want to be safe about it, there’s no harm in seeing if you have some—” She pauses, as if considering the best way to phrase this, as if Rey is a bomb that might just go off at any moment. Which, okay, maybe is fair. Eventually Rose tilts her hands back and forth in front of her body and goes on, “Some...wiggle room to increase your dosage.”

Rey frowns. She can feel how unattractive it is, her nose scrunching up with annoyance and eyebrows stitching together. _How about a smile, pet_ , Unkar used to say, a leering grin stretched over his wide face. _No one wants to see you looking like that._ “Why should _I_ have to change my prescription when _he’s_ the one who’s not taking blockers?”

Rose raises her eyebrows and leans back further on the bed, practically laying down. “Rey,” she says, like it’s a whole sentence.

Rey tightens her hands on her elbows. Says defensively, “What?”

Rose sighs, so deeply Rey wonders it doesn’t make her cough. “Rey,” she repeats meaningfully, after a drawn-out pause. “Babe.”

“What?” Rey asks again, slightly more concerned with each passing moment. “ _What_?”

Rose just looks at her evenly. She says slowly, calmly, “Ben _is_ on blockers.” When Rey does nothing but gape, her cheeks suffusing with heat, Rose cocks her head, as if sincerely confused. “Do you seriously think anyone’d let him coach a mixed team if he wasn’t?”

Rey's already shaking her head, fingers flexing over and over—tense, relax, tense, relax. Wanting to make a fist. “But that’s—no. No.” She shakes her head again, emphasizing the severity of her disbelief. “There’s no way. No. No way.”

“He is.”

“He didn’t _smell_ like he was. He—he—” She stops, biting the inside of her cheek. He _what_ , exactly? Smelled like something she wants to rub herself against? Like he's every good thing she's never had? Like she wants him to pin her to the wall? Like she wants to crawl over the length of his body mark every inch she can get at with her nails, her teeth, her cunt, nothing but an animal after all?

She clears her throat and forces her shoulders to lift up and down.

Rose eyes her now instead of the bat. “Maybe not to you,” she says, still that measured speech. “Look, I’ve known Ben for a while, and I’ve never once scented anything on him.”

“Nothing?” The crack of her voice splits the word in two.

It's the other woman's turn to shake her head. “Nothing at all.”

“Not once?”

“Not once.”

“Oh.” Rey drops her arms at her sides. Through the window slatted on the slanted ceiling above her bed like a skylight, the sun moves out from behind the clouds, filling her room with a yellow glow. “Well,” she says dully. “Shit.”

Rose has explained the rules to Rey, more than once. Rey has watched videos online of derby game play; she has read the Wikipedia page. Pre-presentation, she played soccer in high school, so she already has scavenged knee pads and elbow pads she found in the junkyard back home. She finds a battered old helmet in Maz’s basement and, on a stroke of luck, a pair of worn out skates in her size at a thrift store. Rose gifts her a spare set of new wheels to replace the old ones and wrist pads from when Paige was sixteen with flames shooting up the sides, very late nineties-esque. Not surprisingly, the mouthguard she has to buy new.

Rey finds a tennis court in walking distance of the house that never has anyone in it, and she practices skating there, where the pavement lays smooth and crisply flat. Finn comes with, sometimes, after his shift ends at Amy's, especially when Rey practices at night.

“It's not safe for you to be out this late,” he tells her, but he never tries to stop her from going. Just sits there, while she relearns a skill she was never that great at to begin with, jumping over and weaving through self-imposed obstacles on coltish legs. While he waits for her, a silent sentinel, he tosses a tennis ball back and forth against the wooden backboard chained to the wire fence. The sound of the ball slamming on the backboard, ground, and into Finn's hand becomes a rhythm Rey learns by heart.

She gets faster. Steadier. Skates in a gait no longer so uneven, feeling less and less like a newly born calf with every passing day. Rey hasn't run in years, not really, beyond jogging aimlessly around Clarksville for want of something to do. She finds she missed the way the wind rakes like fingers through her hair.

Even at night, she can't escape the heat. She sweats buckets and drinks her weight in water; her hair weighs her down, so she hacks it up to her shoulders and ties it up tighter. She goes to the clinic at the university and convinces the nurse practitioner, with very little needling, to strengthen her current dosage of suppressants.

She gets better, little by little by little, and when Rose texts her the night before try-outs a string of nigh incomprehensible emojis that likely are intended to convey the sheer level of her excitement, Rey feels stronger than she has in a while. She goes back to the tennis court with her bat and leaves it by the net like a warning while she works in some last minute practicing.

Sometimes, she thinks she can smell cinnamon in the air, like something baking under the sun.

  
  


Rey has been working on fixing up the car she bought used back in Jakku, so she hitches a ride to the arena with Finn. He tells her, good-naturedly annoyed, that he is helping her out of the goodness of his heart, but Rey knows he's just going for a chance to see Poe again. Finn has been less than subtle in his excitement over the relationship, and has spent the last two weeks leaving her to pick up his slack at work while he texts the other man discretely behind the register.

She would be angry with him if it wasn't so damn cute. Finn hasn't been this excited about a guy in forever, so, she figures, she might as well be supportive. Especially with him giving her rides everywhere “out of the goodness of his heart.”

They pull into the parking lot ten minutes early, and Finn practically races out of the car to find Poe in the small crowd gathered near the front, a group of women and a few men standing and chatting together. Rey takes her time pulling herself together, discontented with the faint fluttering of butterflies in her stomach, and willing herself not to throw up from nerves, the way she had once before a soccer meet when she was fourteen.

She closes her eyes, breathing deep and steady. With the AC turned off, the car swelters in the sunlight. There's already strands of hair clinging to the back of her neck, her skin feeling like it's going to melt away, leaving her a puddle of blood and bone.

Rey pulls down the shade in front of her. A prayer card falls out of it and into her lap that reads, PRAYER OF ST. ANTHONY, PATRON OF FINDING LOST THINGS. She glares sternly at her reflection in the grimy, off-color glass.

“Be cool,” she tells mirror-Rey, just barely stopping short of pointing her finger at her own face. “You're normal and good.”

She takes one last deep breath to steady her nerves, replaces the prayer card in the shade, and then she finally gets out of the car, gulping in air from the faint gust of wind that swirls around her shoulders.

In the light of day, Rey can see that the arena, where they went to the exhibition two weeks earlier, is a short, squat building, constructed with seemingly no care at all from some muted grayish brownish bricks. Above the huge, garage-door entrance are the letters A OOINE in big, blocky strips of white, the kind that are supposed to light up neon, even if she's fairly certain they will likely do no such thing in her lifetime. Before the A and between the A and the O, Rey can see electrical wires protruding messily from the facade, indicating that there were some other letters there once, if it can be believed.

The building looks like it was constructed back in the seventies, given the crumbling state of its architecture. It most certainly looks like that was the last time it was landscaped, considering the sprawling cacti that seem to be working their way toward consuming the front of the building completely—huge agave that have grown to biblical proportions with grotesque blooms curdling up from their centers and crawling vines that creep along the corner of the facade. As Rey approaches, she recognizes a few faces from the last time she was here, but many of the women are unfamiliar to her.

“Rey!”

Rose is calling her name excitedly, waving her over to where she stands with her sister and another young woman with dirty blonde hair and huge, wide set eyes. Rey joins them, clutching her fingers on the strap of her bag over and over again, feeling distinctly underdressed in her worn-out clothes even though they're all wearing shorts and tank tops, same as her.

“Rey,” Rose says, still waving until the very moment Rey stands beside her, “this is Kaydel. Kaydel, Rey.”

The girl Rose is standing with—Kaydel—smiles brightly, those big eyes of hers lighting up in delight. “Oh, sick,” she says, pleased, and then, affecting a lowered voice like DJ Khaled, adds, “Another one!”

Rey furrows her brow. “What?”

“She means another omega,” Rose explains, laughing. “We're the only two in The Rebels right now. I was telling her how great it'll be having you on the team, too.” She hip-checks Rey, and Rey can't help but smile in the face of Rose's boundless confidence in her.

“If I even make it,” Rey points out. Ignoring the butterflies flapping insistently somewhere in her lower intestine.

Rose does not seem even slightly concerned. She just waves her hand dismissively and proclaims, “You will.”

“But—”

Rose shakes her head. Say flatly, “I have spoken,” and then says nothing more on the matter.

Each team has fifteen players. There are, as far as Rey can tell, no fewer than six teams in the league. Maybe more—Rey can't be too certain. The Rogue Ones are up for try-outs before The Rebels, Kaydel tells her, and even from outside Rey can hear the drag of skates against the wooden floors, the distant grunts of exertion and thumps as the women make contact.

Her stomach clenches tighter and tighter, though Rey has no idea if it's from excitement or fear.

Eventually, it's their turn.

Rey walks to the rink with her skates in her hand, and it's instantly apparent they're way more worn down than anyone else's, even with the new wheels. She laces them up with nervous fingers while Poe goes over the rules again. There are, he tells them, two spots open in The Rebels.

Rey counts five other women standing with her. The rest of the people outside, the ones that already made the cut, sit and chat together in the bleachers. Rose, Kaydel, Finn, and Paige give Rey eager thumbs-ups from the front row that Rey returns weakly.

 _Please, Jesus, if you’re real, don't let me throw up._ Rey pauses and frowns, looking up at the ceiling, in the general direction of Jesus. _Also if you could help me get my car running that’d be cool, too._

“Alright.” Poe says at the end of his little spiel, clapping his hands together resoundingly. “Let’s do this, ladies.”

Before she presented, soccer was her wheelhouse, and she was damn good at it. Rey played offense, and the coach, an alpha who snarled more than he smiled, put her on the field early and often. She’d come back from practice late at night to an empty house, whatever empty house she was placed in at the time, her limbs aching and bruises lining her legs and her knees scraped raw. Rey was tall for a girl, competitive and unafraid to get into it. And then, one day, she was suddenly an omega. And then, just as suddenly, she was defense. And then, after another few weeks, she was the goalie. And then, not long after, second string and waiting quietly on the bench, until she just quit the team altogether.

Rey hasn’t run in years, not for real. But in the rink, strapped into a pair of skates?

She feels like she’s fucking _flying_.

It’s the moment she steps onto the curved track and lines up in two rows with the other five women—her heart pounding wildly in her chest, her vision blurring into a tunnel. It feels like it used to, like running. So acutely aware of every single muscle in her legs, every ache and stretch. Poe reminds them just before he blows his whistle which hits are okay and which are illegal. He tells them not to hold anything back.

So she doesn’t.

And it feels— _good_. _So_ good. _Amazing_ , actually, to finally be back. Fuck soccer, fuck Coach Teedo who nudged her quietly from the team, convinced her fragile little body wouldn’t be able to take it. She missed this in a way she never wanted to let herself acknowledge: every breath of air, every muscle, every bone in her body straining for the same thing—to win. To be faster, stronger.

Rey makes contact. She pushes and shoves and gets pushed and shoved in turn, and she is faster and stronger and _better_.

By the time Poe blows his whistle again and the women on the track brake (one girl stumbling off the banked track and into the center of the rink, clearly unfamiliar with the skill of stopping), Rey doesn’t feel like she’s going to throw up so much as shriek with joy. She grins wide enough to split her face in two as she skates to the rail and looks to the bleachers, where Paige and Rose are whooping and Kaydel is making an OK sign with her thumb and index finger and Finn is matching her bright smile with one of his own.

She’s sweating, her lungs fluttering and arms twitching with leftover adrenaline. She barely hears Poe thanking the other girls for their time. Her blood is rushing in her ears loud enough to drown out every single sound.

And then, she glances up to the back of the bleachers.

Dark eyes are the first thing she registers—dark eyes burning into hers, set in a long face, framed with sharp features. A body clad in black that seems to stretch on and on, his long legs propped up on the bench in front of him. Taking up so much space, unapologetically _massive_ , with thighs like tree trunks and hands bigger than her waist and shoulders just made for her to rest her knees over. He could pin her down so well, so easily. He could hold her down and take whatever he wants, if he wanted it.

Rey shivers, and she can’t tell if it’s from nerves or adrenaline or something else entirely, something she doesn’t want to name. Hatred, she decides. Because he’s so rude. It’s probably, she decides, just a rush of hatred.

Her breath catches in her throat as he adjusts his posture, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. Even across the distance between them she can see how heated his gaze is, how his full lips are just barely parted, like he's scenting the air. She clenches her thighs together and _aches_.

As she watches, Ben stands up, strolls down the bleachers on those powerful legs, and walks silently away from the rink, toward the back room of the arena near the bar.

Rey doesn’t start breathing again until he’s gone.

It’s no big surprise when Poe pulls her and another girl, a beta named Jessika, aside and tells them they made the team.

“It’s really a no-brainer,” he says, grinning lightly. “You two aren’t afraid to take a hit. Or make one.”

Rey smiles, tells him thank you, even as her stomach flips and turns like a damn pancake. The air seems to crackle like an empty lighter, and it still _smells_ like him, like the best thing she’s ever tasted in her life. Like honey. Like sex. Like cinnamon and chocolate and butter and every good thing and _fuck_ , she needs to get some air, needs to remind herself of the existence of other scents. Agave. Sweat. Fucking _bird shit_ —anything but him.

She says hi her friends, thanks Poe again, makes casual small talk for as long as she can stand, and then makes her excuses and practically _sprints_ to the exit.

Outside, she breathes. Just for a moment, stands there and breathes in the heavy, languorous scent of the plants overtaking the building. It’s hotter than hell, the sun slanting brutally over her head, but Rey doesn’t even mind it much. She inhales clean air, exhales, until the scent of him is a faint memory, nothing more than a tickle inside her chest.

How can he _possibly_ be on blockers? How can he possibly still smell like that? Rey kicks lamely at the thick root of a cactus, growling at her own idiocy, at the fact that she’s definitely going to have to start dropping thirty bucks a month on the name-brand suppressants she was taking before—maybe even more, if she wants to be really cautious and go for the _really_ strong shit—because how is she going to be around him otherwise? How is she going to _function_?

While she stands there, still muttering darkly to herself and needlessly whacking an innocent plant, she doesn’t even notice the man who comes up to her until he’s standing less than six inches away.

“Rough day, kiddo?”

Rey just barely manages to bite off a shriek of surprise. She turns her head to see a man, an omega a little bit taller than her, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth, a wry smile hidden under a beard. He’s wearing Birkenstock’s and carrying what looks like an iced latte.

Rey takes in a short, shallow breath and nods. “Only a bit,” she says.

He extends his left hand to hers, the one not holding the drink, and Rey takes it awkwardly.

“Luke Skywalker,” he tells her serenely, and then circles his hand around his head as if to gesture to everything. “I own the place. And you are?”

“I just made on of the teams,” she stammers. “The Rebels. I’m Rey.”

“Ah,” he says. “You must be an impressive young woman then. Rey who?”

She frowns. “Is that—relevant somehow?”

Luke seems to mull this over. “Nah,” he allows. “Just curious. So Rey, is there any particular reason you're attacking my plant life?” He doesn't wait for her to reply before going on, “No, wait—I have a hunch.”

Her heartbeat picks up speed. “Really?”

He grins crookedly. “It’s an alpha, isn’t it?”

Rey sputters. “What—who—rude to—just _assuming_ things—”

Luke only laughs, as if she’d just told him an exceedingly funny joke. “Am I wrong?”

She grumbles. “No.” Luke nods, clearly pleased to have been right, but he doesn’t push it any more than that. Which makes it even more embarrassing when Rey hears herself say, “Do you—” She flushes in a way entirely unrelated to the heat before forging ahead. “Do you mind if I ask a...personal question?”

“Is there any other kind?” he asks rhetorically, seeming very much like the kind of man who wants to appear very deep.

Rey resists the urge to roll her eyes. _Think of the monks. Those beautiful, heatless bastards. This Birkenstock-wearing hippie could be a shaman for all you know._ She’s already asked Maz about it, after all, and the older woman had no better answer than, _eh, shit happens_ , so she might as well check with a different older omega. “Have you ever had your suppressants just—not work?”

He shrugs. “From time to time. When I need to change up my prescription. Or if I’m eating too much sodium.” He cocks his head, thinking this over. “Or maybe it's not enough sodium. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” she says way too quickly. She clears her throat, shaking her head. “I think I’m just gonna have to pay for the fancier shit anyway.”

“That’s always a risk.” Luke takes an idle sip of his latte, smirking gently at the plastic cup. “Is it anyone in particular who’s, uh. Bothering you?”

“Nope,” she lies. “Not anyone in particular.”

He eyes her like he knows that she’s not telling the truth, but luckily doesn’t press any further. “I’m sure it’ll be fine, kiddo. You’ll figure it out.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Besides,” he goes on, happily ignoring her slip of sarcasm, “if you’re concerned about someone in particular, if you ever feel unsafe—not that you do, but just in case—I can make sure my nephew watches out for you when you’re here.”

“Your nephew?”

Luke nods sagely. “He can get protective,” he says quietly, as if telling her a secret. “If you ask him to, he’ll make sure to steer any unwanted attention away from you.”

Rey tries to school her expression into something other than a frown of dismay. She can’t tell if the idea of this old hippie’s nephew keeping Ben away from her feels like a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it's neither. Maybe it's both. “No one’s bothering me,” she says firmly. “Not in a bad way, anyway.” 

“Have you met him?”

Rey blinks. “Who?”

“My nephew. He's around a lot. Does the books.” His shoulders tilt, and he grins. “Mostly ‘cause his mother makes him and I’ve never been that good at math, but still. Good kid.”

“I don’t know.” She shifts on her feet, sweat now cooling on the back of her neck with the way the wind brushes through the loose strands of her hair. There’s something burning in her chest, and her tongue...itches, and the smell of the breeze curling around her head is making her feel dizzy. “I don't think so. Who’s your—”

“Speak of the devil,” Luke interrupts, cutting her short and looking just above her head. “Ben.”

Rey freezes. She doesn’t even need to turn her head to know he’s towering over her now. She feels significantly smaller with her skates off and ratty converse back on. When she turns to face him and nod in greeting, her eyes are level with his neck.

God, she wants to _bite_ him.

For _pain and hurting_ reasons, she’s pretty sure.

Luke, she thinks, is asking if they’re acquainted already; she can’t quite tell, with the way every syllable sounds muffled, like it’s reaching her from the other end of a very long hallway. Ben is responding in the affirmative then, and now they are both looking at her so she nods because she’s cool and normal and good.

 _Good_ , her omega croons, _we could be so good for Alpha, he could take care of us._

Rey blinks hard, feeling slightly drunk when she finally registers that Luke has asked her a question that requires a real answer beyond a hum or nod.

“No, 'm not from around here,” she says.

The follow-up question is to be expected, but Rey dreads it anyway. “Where are you from?”

“Oh,” she says, falsely nonchalant, trying to make a joke out of it. “Nowhere.”

Even when she’s not looking at him, she can still _feel_ Ben’s displeasure at the vagueness of her response.

“No one’s from nowhere,” Luke says.

Rey clears her throat, squares her shoulders like she’s priming for a fight. “Jakku,” she says.

She doesn’t miss the way Ben’s scent spikes at that, flaring with a burst of fury. It’s so sharp it almost takes her breath away.

His voice drips with disgust when he says, “The meth capital of the south?”

Rey bristles, her eyes prickling, her heart throwing itself against her ribs like a caged dog. She loathes it, all of it: that fucking pitying, condescending _New York Times_ article that used words like “decaying,” “despairing,” “desperate”; her professor who made the class read _Hillbilly Elegy_ and called on her to get her “nuanced perspective”; her beta roommate whispering into her iPhone _I don’t know they stuck me with some trailer trash_ omega.

Luke frowns. “Hey, Ben, watch it—”

“You grew up in that _junkyard_?”

It's something about the way he says it, something in his voice that sounds rough, scraped raw with anger. She can't tell what he's so upset about, why he's so disgusted with her, but it makes every part of her omega wail with distress and every part of the rest of her rage with righteous indignation. "Yes," she hisses, fury percolating, hot and thick, in the center of her chest, warring with the part of her that whimpers she's _displeased Alpha, he's not going to want us now_. Rey ignores both. “I did grow up in that _junkyard_. And it's none of your _fucking_ business.”

Distantly, she registers that they're alone now, standing in front of A OOINE, because Luke apparently thought better of being present for this and booked it the hell away. Ben is standing in front of her, _looming_ , being huge and untouchable and so very alpha with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed and every line in his body rigid with tension.

Then, as she watches, the muscles in his body start to slacken and relax. The fire still blazes behind his eyes, but it's muted, tamped down.

His arms drop to his sides like a surrender. “You're right,” he says, sounding oddly bitter. “It's none of my business.”

Rey blinks once, then again. Confused, that's what she is. Baffled. She doesn't have a whole bunch of close, first-account experience with alphas, but she gets the sense from all the ones she has met that they'd rather cut off their right hand than admit to being wrong about anything. And yet—here is an alpha, a rude one, a rudely _large_ one, doing just that.

The anger that built up at the base of her throat dies down, quick as a doused fire.

“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”

Ben shifts, adjusting his posture almost nervously. “Congratulations, by the way,” he mutters after a long pause. “You're really—very good.”

“Thanks.” She studiously ignores the way her omega bursts with happiness at the word _good_ coming from his full lips. She shakes her head, as if to shake herself free from the thought. She repeats more confidently, “Thank you, Ben, I appreciate it.”

He cracks a smile. It’s nice, on his face. It makes him look younger. He has dimples and slightly crooked teeth, and it makes something inside her twist and flutter. “I guess we’re on opposite sides now.”

“Looks like it.”

“Alas.”

She grins despite herself. “Alas?”

“Alack,” he replies seriously, “egads, what a pity, et cetera.”

“You still trying to poach me?”

He shrugs, tucking one hand into the pocket of the black jeans she has no idea how he’s wearing in the scorching heat. “Nah. Probably not a good idea, don’t you think?”

Her stomach clenches. “Why not?” she asks, somewhat breathlessly.

“Well, because—” His free hand sketches back and forth across the space between them before falling somewhat pathetically back to his side. “You know.”

“No, I don’t.” She absolutely does. “What are you talking about?” She knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“Come on, Rey, are you gonna make me say it?” At her stubborn refusal to speak, he groans. The sound brushes some part deep inside her, and, not for the first time since she saw him in the bleachers, Rey wishes he didn’t smell so damn alluring, even as she wants to inch closer and take in more of his scent. “Because—because I can’t be around you without wanting—”

“Without wanting what?”

The tension of his body returns as she looks at him, his arms folding over his chest. His expression is neutral, set even. He holds her gaze steadily. The calm, factual affect of his voice makes his next sentence somehow even more arousing. “Without wanting to knot you.”

Her omega brain practically wails with delight, doing the internal equivalent of pounding its fists on the table to a steady rhythm of _knot me, knot me, knot me_.

“Okay,” she says, somehow even more breathless than before, feeling like someone’s punched all the air out of her lungs. “Yeah, if—you’re probably right, then. Because—so it’s probably—cool, and everything. Yeah.” _What the fuck are you doing? Tell him to knot you!_

He seems as confused as she feels, her brain warring with itself between: _let him fuck you right here in front of God and all these cacti_ and _you don’t fuck with alphas for a reason and it’s that they’re all pricks and he’s no exception and even if his scent makes you want to lose it that’s no good reason to go back on your word_ and _god the way he smells makes me want to fucking die_. “Cool and everything?” he repeats slowly.

Oh, Jesus H. Christ. If his scent doesn’t kill her, then her humiliation most definitely will. Rey draws herself up to her full height and still barely manages to make it to his chin _fuck_ — “What I mean is—that’s not going to happen,” she says, trying to infuse more certainty in her voice than she feels. “I don’t...date alphas, so.” Doesn’t date them, doesn’t like them, certainly doesn’t fuck them, and why doesn’t that feel as reassuring as it should—

“You don’t?” He leans in slightly, and Rey’s internal organs and brain cease to function all at once. He says softly, his voice low and dark enough to drag up her spine, “Ah. You don’t.”

“Yeah. So.” It is not something she’s going to acknowledge, his eyes darkening at her admission. Stupid toxic alpha possessiveness, she’s sure. Pleased she’s not been _claimed_. _Bullshit_. “I’m not interested in the, um.” She winces. “Knotting thing.” Her face feels hot in a way that has nothing to do with the sun still careening down on her. There's a dull, persistent ache low in her stomach, between her legs, and Rey can't tell if she wants to leave and take care of it or ask him if he can use those insanely huge hands on her himself.

“Okay,” he says eventually, more quietly than the conversation warrants him to be. He nods. “I believe you.”

He clearly doesn’t, but she decides to let it slide. “Well, then. I’m glad we understand each other.”

He nods again, and Rey returns the gesture, breathing deeply and instantly regretting it when it only floods her senses with more of his smell. Judging by the way his pupils dilate even wider, she’s not the only one affected. Her mouth falls open just barely, enough to pull in more of his scent directly, fill herself up with it, fill herself up with him, and—

“Maybe we should try to avoid each other,” she blurts out. “Just until it goes away.” At least until she can get herself on the best, most fool-proof suppressants she can get her grubby little hands on, fuck the cost.

“I don’t think it’ll matter.”

She frowns. “What?”

“I said, I don’t think it’ll matter. I’m already—” He laughs, a short, strangled bark of sound. “Already on the strongest blockers on the market, and they’re—it’s not _working_ —”

“You are?” It’s shameful, the way her legs squeeze together, the way she’s growing increasingly concerned she might just climb onto him and beg him to fuck her right here and what the fuck is happening to her? She’s wet and sticky between her thighs and not from sweat, and she thinks Ben might be able to tell, able to smell it because his eyes widen and his jaw goes slack and he looks like he wants to mount her on the blacktop and she’s going to let him right now right now right fucking _now_ —

“Rey, do you need a ride?”

“Yes,” she replies, loudly and far too quickly. Her hair whips around her head as she turns to see Finn standing a little ways away, holding hands with Poe and tossing his car keys in the air. Rey screws her eyes shut and calls back, “I’ll be right there.”

Finn looks between the two of them. He narrows his eyes. “Sure.”

“I’ll see you around,” she says. She looks back to Ben, who is working his jaw and looking at her with so much intense and open desire that she can actually feel slick dripping out of her, pooling into the gusset of her panties. “Or not. Or whatever.”

“Yeah.” He clenches his jaw tighter, lips churning, and angles his body away from hers slightly. He lifts his hand in a paltry wave. “Or whatever.”

Rey has to stop herself from running full tilt away from him as she goes to meet Finn at his car. She can’t resist the stupid little instinct to look back over at Ben, where he stands surrounded by plant life, opening and closing his hands into fists.

The car ride back to Rey’s apartment is silent until Finn breaks it, ten minutes in.

“So you’re, like, super into that alpha guy, huh?”

“What?” she squeaks, looking quickly at him in the driver's seat. “No. What? I’m—not at all, Finn.”

He snorts. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m not. It’s—you know I don’t date alphas.”

“Sure, sure. And why is that, again?”

Rey frowns at her friend’s open expression of skepticism. “Because they’re assholes,” she says, sounding less firm than she wants to.

“Poe’s not,” Finn points out. When Rey doesn’t immediately protest, he goes on gently, “So all I’m saying is _maybe_ —”

“No,” she says flatly, and that is the end of the conversation.

She doesn’t want to. She tries not to. After Finn drops her off, Rey tells herself, very sternly, that she is not going to do anything embarrassing or unseemly. She may be an omega, but she is not a pitiable creature, not helpless to her biology, a mewling little thing that simpers and squeals and begs for a knot. She’s _better_ than that—stronger and enlightened and _everything_.

But it’s that damn scent. His dark eyes. The muscles cording his arms that show how strong he is, how he could wrap them around her, haul her into his lap, hold her down while he fucks her. Rey’s body is a traitor, her heart and her hands and especially her pussy, which has visibly seeped slick into her underwear when she pulls them down her off in her bathroom to change out of her sweaty clothes.

Rey bites her lip, suppressing a groan, and her fingers betray her when they slip down her torso and strum lightly at her clit.

She stumbles back into the bathroom door, the wood creaking a protest under her weight, but she can’t keep herself upright. Her heart is in her mouth, and she can still scent him, her fucking _clothes_ smell like him, and her fingers rub in tight little circles, fast and brutal, because she has to get this over with as quickly as possible, can’t think about it. What she wants. How much she wants.

She feels empty inside, so empty, but she doesn’t let herself think about that, doesn’t even try to slip a finger inside herself because she’s not going to let herself think about him fucking her full, stuffing her with his cock, with his knot, no, she’s not thinking about it, she opens her eyes and makes herself stare at the tiny rectangle mirror above her bathroom sink, makes herself look at how awful and desperate and needy she is. She won’t be so weak again, she promises herself silently, and then she twitches and trembles and comes under her hand.

Her lungs burn. Every muscle wound tight. She stands up on unsteady legs, hot with satisfaction and shame, and goes to the shower to turn on the cold water and wash every piece of the day down the drain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Guess I’m contagious. It’d be safest if you ran.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMA4vDwP7n4)


End file.
